The Castle

So ever since I was a kid I had heard my Dad talk about The Castle, a mountain in the Budawang Ranges in Morton National Park. I have walked Pigeon House many times but The Castle walk sounded so grandious that it's always been a walk I planned to do.
Finally this year (July 30 2017) my Dad and I went away camping down into Morton and stayed at Long Gully to hike The Castle.
I was feeling like absolute shit (having been at my fiancée's work party and well over-drinking), however I made us up a nice fire for the night as we settled in, eager for our hike the following morning.

During the night as we sat around the camp fire and talked, mostly my Dad telling the story of how he had done The Castle before with Hash (Hash House Harriers) in the pouring rain and how they never made it to the top but the sights were incredible. As we talked we heard noises from the bush to realise we were being watched by two Brush Tail Possums, who soon came closer to our camp and were quite friendly. Enough so that I was able to feed and eventually pat them. 

However, I don't recommend letting them get too close as soon they were on our table trying to get too our food and one ended up chewing on the end of my finger thinking I had food in my hand.

That night the wind was howling, it was like a fighter pilot was taking off over our head all night. It was just the noise raging above us as the tent was not hit by much wind. The next morning, after not much sleep, we packed and began our walk.

After you follow the path for a little bit you soon come to a creek and have to look for the way to go as there is one sign post here, but well hidden and no more from this point on.

Photo (of my Dad) taken on the way back

You walk through a rainforest like area filled with cabbage palms for a while before the track begins to go up hill entering drier bushland. 

Termite Mound. A staple of every Aussie Bushwalk

It goes up and down a few times leading you to the base of the mountain, at this point the walk begins to be all up hill. Along this point, and just before you get to an incline (with some chains along the side to help you up it), we came across a little Lizard.

Just up this point you have a spectacular view already of the gully and Pigeon House Mountain in the distance to your left.

You begin heading left walking around the mountain and see many caves and Honeycomb rocks.

The walking track is quite easy from here, there are moments of uphill and climbing up little ledges but further along there is a decent amount of scrambling up and over and down big rocks, so if you're not confident climbing and scrambling this hike is not for you.

It continues on like this, climbing up ledges and trying to navigate the way, although there are arrows scratched onto rocks and trees along the way they can sometimes be hard to locate, so another system of finding the right way is looking for the knots tied into the plants by, who, I don't know, but Dad dubbed them "The Phantom Knotter."

You will eventually get to a pretty cave which Dad had told me that while walking with Hash in the pouring rain he found people huddled up camping in this cave out of the rain, and judging by all the fire places along there it must be a pretty popular spot.

Eventually you find yourself going up, not so much stairs, but wooden planks layering the soil so it's essentially stairs, there will also be some small wooden bollards along here too, while walking this I realised the back of my heel was getting rubbed raw from wearing old joggers that had worn down.

So I stuffed the back of my shoe with tissues and continued walking. You soon get to a cross roads where you can turn left to Monolith Valley (a walk I will have to do sometime) and right which takes you to The Castle.

Not far from here you reach a section called "The Tadpole Tail". I have no idea why, but you have to scramble over some rocks, squeeze through a cave and then crawl through the next bit.

You'll come out the other side and find yourself having to climb down a rope. 

Again you'll find yourself in the bush, no clear path so you can try to find your way, you'll have to go down and head right and as you walk along you'll come to a little shelter we dubbed "Licorice Rock" as we bumped into a couple here eating Licorice and it is a nice spot to have a little rest and eat. We stopped to take Dads insoles or 'gel pads' out of his joggers so I could place them at the back of my heel to stop the rubbing.

After this there is a lot more rope climbing, scrambling and from here on out I'm sure a lot of people would stop and not make it too the top as some of it is pretty hairy. Along this bit we bumped into 3 females who were lost and couldn't find the way to go, we found out they were professional rock climbers and we began to all make out we too the top.

Just after this there are some even steeper climbs and on the day it was absolutely howling with wind. We were exhausted and sore and we sure as hell didn't feel safe up in that gale, it was the sort of wind that blows you around on an average day just walking along the street, so being up that mountain we didn't feel comfortable and turned back while the rock climbers continued. However, disappointed we didn't make it to the top we went back and attempted again on the 15th of September 2017 (again camping at Long Gully and getting no sleep due to the wind). As we reached this point (the second time) we found a little had changed. The ropes looked a bit more worn and we found a lovely piece of it laying on the ground.

However the wind was on and off that day so when it'd died down we proceeded to continue the climb and make our way all the way to the top, hoping to sign our names into an apparent book that was on the top. I'd like to stop and just say how cool it is that my Dad (who is 64 years old) made it to the top.

Atop the Castle - Pigeon House/Didthul in the background

We found the plateau beautiful looking like something out of Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World'. We made a note of where we had ascended so we didn't get lost coming back, noting we'd come up right next to a little Xanthorrhoea (Grasstree). We proceeded to look around for the book to sign our names and complete our journey, however the apparent trails that were supposed to be there weren't, or were overgrown. We walked around the rim before we began to find piles of rocks which we realised were human made, we followed them assuming they would lead us to the book.

At one pile Dad stopped me, handing me a rock saying we should both put a rock on top. I looked down realising the one he was trying to hand me had a huge Huntsman Spider on it, when I told him he freaked and dropped it.

We both placed a rock on top and found they were all over the top but really only led to what looked like somones camp site. The wind then began picking up again and blowing an absolute gale, but we still spent an hour walking over the entire top, all around the outskirts and through overgrown scrub in the middle and were unable to find it. So I think it's safe to assume it's no longer there.

Panorama from the Top

We then tried to find our way down, even knowing what we were looking for we struggled. Eventually finding it we said we would get the heck down because the wind was that ferocious, there was just no rest to it. However climbing down we found ourselves terrified. One of the ropes is attached to a dead tree and in the wind the tree was moving and you could hear the roots pulling like it could snap at any time. It was definitely not safe and hopefully some new ropes will be put up and in a safer way. We eventually made it down having got to the top on our second attempt (even though the wind ended up worse than the first time we went). It truly is an adventure and an amazing hike. Hopefully I can go back soon and take the turn off to Monolith Valley and come back and post about it. The hike, including the hour walking around on top took us about 8 hours (although that was the second time, which was a cooler day and we stopped less on the walk up to look around and take photos or eat, also my foot was fine, so we powered through it). If you have a high level of fitness you might be able to do it faster, but it all depends on how much time you want to take (if you decide to attempt it!)

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Thanks for reading! - Steven